A Variation on Red
by InnocentGuilt
Summary: Fifty sentences outlining the curses and blessings of love. Cooper/Frank. Warning: slash, a few sentences imply character death, me as an author.


A/N: I don't even know why I did this…

Disclaimer:…but it isn't mine.

.s.s.s.

Comfort:

Comfort used to be an abstract thing for Frank Moses, but he learned to live without it—it was honestly a shock when he found himself avidly seeking it from William Cooper; found himself wanting for the younger man's arms to hold him close while the world steadily eroded away his life.

Kiss:

It was a ghost of a kiss, an almost not there touch that breathed across his lips and had him leaning forward, just trying…just reaching for Frank's lips, hoping for more, hoping for everything…

Soft:

The light filtered in through the window, highlighting Cooper's body with dollops of gold and soft whites, and Frank was lost staring at tan skin turned so warm and he couldn't even begin to resist the impulse to reach out, to touch the flat planes of Cooper's skin or the way his nipple pucker's under his light touch, to see the way his lips curl when he awakens to the sensation of Frank's hands caressing him.

Pain:

He's felt a lot of pain in his life, from paper cuts to his wife's packing up the kids and leaving, but somehow it all means nothing to the pain he feels when Victoria tells him so flippantly, yet pointedly, "Frank will always love Sarah. There's no use even trying…"

Potatoes:

Cooper gets a fairly deep cut while peeling potatoes one evening at Frank's house, bleeds all over everything in the kitchen and in general doesn't treat it like a big deal; however, Frank acts as if it were a fatal wound from which he would never recover.

Rain:

The rain was cold and stung his skin as he ran toward Cooper's prone form, but it was nothing in comparison to the stinging cold in his soul; nothing compared to the freezing fingers that he pressed to his cheek when there was no response to his calls; nothing compared to the crippling iceberg that speared his heart when he realized that Cooper had no pulse.

Chocolate:

His mug was still too hot to take a sip from, but he watched Cooper with a smirk on his face as the younger man dipped his forefinger into his cup of hot chocolate and deemed it too hot, just before he sucked the liquid chocolate off of his skin.

Happiness:

Sarah's getting tired, even Frank can see that, and she's about a whisper away from calling it quits—Frank's tried to understand why, tried to reason as to what he's possibly doing wrong, what caused her love of adventure to fade—so he guessed she wasn't as cut out as everyone had thought, but it still came out of nowhere when she said, "He would make you happier," because he knows who she's talking about, he just doesn't know what she's talking about.

Telephone:

Marvin lived with Frank, so Cooper had learned that if he didn't want to continuously buy a new phone—and find his ex-wife's number, and import all the numbers that Frank has saved for him on his hard drive, and make sure he had all the proper settings needed for a job at the CIA—he should probably leave his phone in his car trunk when he stayed the night with them.

Ears:

It was amazing to Cooper how the gentle stroking of his ear would send Frank to sleep, just the brush of his thumb along the curve of cartilage and he would sigh contentedly, a soft kneading at the lobe and he would turn subconsciously into the caress, his eyes drooping lower, with gun-calloused fingers tracing the ridges and contours and he was gone, drifting lazily away from consciousness and further into Cooper's embrace.

Name:

'Cooper' had never been a special name to him—he's always been Will, or daddy, or Agent—it had always only been his last name, something he signed on paper without any real thought, a name his father had given him and so he had given his children; it had never meant anything until Frank said it, soft and low and meaningful.

Sensual:

Sarah had been loving in every physical way, always touching, holding, feeling, but she had never ensconced his every form of sense the way Cooper could with a single grace of his hand across Frank's shoulder, never ruled his body with a hot hand trailing down his neck, and certainly never stolen his entire self-control with a smoldering kiss that claimed not just Frank but everything that was Frank as well.

Death:

Cooper died in an explosion according to CIA records, bits and pieces supposedly found (the only part large enough they could find of the body was his pinky finger) and they mark him off; Agent William Cooper no longer existed to the CIA, the USA, or his family, an empty grave marked for anyone who may have once loved or known him, but useless to a band of REDs who were patching up the wounds caused by an aftershock Cooper hadn't been able to clear.

Sex:

Sex almost feels like something Frank was trained in—not natural, but something he learned to entice marks into his web—but with Cooper it feels different, no longer methodically placed hands that he had found himself doing even with Sarah, instead urges, the need to touch, feel commit every inch of skin that is revealed to him, the want to claim, mark, demolish every last vestige of any previous lover Cooper may have had on the job and off.

Touch:

They touched covertly, a hand on the small of his back as Cooper walked by, gentle squeeze of fingers on his neck as Frank congratulated him; it was never anything overt, but to their friends it spoke volumes into how they were, who they were.

Weakness:

Both Frank and Cooper have many weaknesses; they're both mortal men and thusly prone to cons, but it never really hit either of them that their strongest weakness would be two children whom they now watch from a distance, keeping them safe even though Cooper can never see them again and Frank has never known them; it never hit them that the urge to protect a little girl and boy would override all other natural instincts until it nearly blew their covers.

Tears:

Cooper had never been immune to his children's tears, never been in his paternal code to sit idly by as someone else wiped saline paths from their eyes if he had the ability to do so, and he nearly lashed out at Frank when the older man held him back from doing just that, from clueing in their mark, and he nearly succumbed to his own tears when he saw another man, a stranger for all intents and purposes, lean down to brush his son's knee off.

Speed:

"Go faster!" he demanded irately, "Victoria and Ivan are already there and Marvin has probably shot three people by now. Step on it!" but his demands were ignored with a hint of a smile tracing across Frank's lips as he responded, "You hurry too much. Relax and enjoy the suspense."

Wind:

There's a howling noise around them in the dark of the night, no other sound rose above it (unless the thundering of his heart counted) and it is really,_ really_ beginning to disturb him because he can't hear any of them (and normally that wouldn't bother him, because they've always been silent,_ always_), but the wind is howling and he can't even see them and his only thought is,_ "Frank…"_

Freedom:

Their will is not their own, hasn't been since they joined the CIA and sold their lives to taking others; they have never conquered their lives, not even after Frank was forced to retire, not even after Cooper was pronounced dead the first time (he was beginning to feel a lot like Marvin); their liberty had been stolen, their choices ruled by what would outsmart the next move made by their former employers…it really wasn't much of a life, but it was the only one they had.

Life:

"There is a lot to life that we are not proud of," Ivan said with a small wistful smile on his face, and Frank knew he was thinking of Victoria and all of their lost years, "but there is also much more to look forward to," he continued; at that point Frank couldn't help but glancing at the young man reading on the couch.

Jealousy:

Cooper was used to strange feelings cropping up at inopportune times, but for the life of him, he had the hardest time coming to terms with why he had to continuously turn away from the sight of Sarah kissing Frank Moses.

Hands:

Frank presses their palms together, measures their fingers against each other and smiles each time he rediscovers that Cooper has longer fingers, weaves their fingers together and kisses the back of Cooper's hand before he rubs his thumb against the skin he's just pressed his lips against, as if trying to ingrain that single kiss into his skin forever…as if Cooper could ever forget each kiss laid upon his body.

Taste:

The flavor of beer is heavy on their tongues and it's not the most pleasant of tastes, but there are worse… there are much worse and the hint of Frank's natural taste underlying the heady taste of beer is something to be savored, because Cooper has the sinking feeling that this won't be happening again.

Forever:

They've made so many promises that could never be kept, never even had the prayer of being kept, but the worst is without doubt 'Forever.'

Blood:

The blood on the bandage wasn't something new (blood was never new to him anymore, despite the fact that he had done this to himself); however, the stunted movement of his pinky that_ wasn't there_ was a new experience, the fact that that one appendage was missing, gone for good, was a new establishment in his life and one that he would gladly repeat if it would keep his children safe.

Sickness:

Frank is feverish in an alarming way which makes Cooper fret; he hovers by the bed as Victoria clucks over Frank's flushed form, muttering away about infection and imbecile agents with shiny guns and stunted retirees who don't know when they need help, and Cooper can't help but agree by the third time Frank groans in a pain that the younger man doesn't believe is due to aching muscles.

Melody:

The song Marvin kept humming was seriously beginning to bug Cooper in a way that had his fingers itching for the trigger of his gun, because really if he said, "Frank and Cooper sitting in a tree…" one more time bad things were going to happen and Frank was just going to have to forgive him.

Star:

Frank puts a star on top of a little Christmas tree that he's done up, looking all proud and smug with himself; Cooper just sits back and rolls his eyes and tries not to think about how he really likes that stupid star and the stupid tree it sits on—Frank's domesticity is catching.

Home:

Their home is made on the run, a stolen car here, a rented room there, and several stays at the many places of Victoria or Ivan; they don't consist of much, pictures of Cooper's children, a pressed avocado leaf that's pressed into one of Frank's crappy romance novels, and two duffels filled with guns and bullets and few changes of clothing and it isn't much but it's all they have and all they are.

Confusion:

It was perplexing, the soft, subtle hand at the small of Cooper's back, urging him forward through the throng of people; it was baffling, the possessive way Frank closed his hand around his when he reached to shake their mark's hand; it was mystifying, how one look from the older man had people thinking twice about approaching Cooper; most of all it was bewildering, because it all meant that Frank wanted him to call his and his alone.

Fear:

Cooper felt himself freeze when Sarah waltzes into the kitchen with a shiny ring glinting from her marriage finger—he literally felt his heart speed up and all hope drain out of him, which could be dramatic, but he wasn't in charge of corralling his emotions—it took him several minutes of small talk before he gestured at her ring with a gruff, "From Frank?"; it should have made him feel better when she said, "Oh no, this is my grandmother's, but it doesn't fit on any other finger…" and slowly trails off into a story, but instead it made him feel worse, because it could happen one day.

Lightning/Thunder:

The storm gets so bad that he and Cooper stop at a motel, because, really, storms are okay; they've made it through a hurricane, a few tornadoes, but flooding really isn't something they can navigate around, so they stop, and for a while they stay inside a waste away a few hours in the most physical form possible, but at the end Cooper stands outside, shirtless and watches the crashes of lightning and listens to the roars of thunder as they echo across the town they're staying in; Frank is captivated by the simple awe that he sees on Cooper's face every time the sky lights up, the way he can almost see it in his mind, even after the light has gone.

Bonds:

There was nothing that bound them together except for the want to go forward in life with someone who understood, someone who would be there, even at their lowest of lows; there was nothing binding them, save for the want to love each other.

Market:

Frank went to the market when the need for_ actual_ food became too much to ignore, when he returns he comes with bread, chicken, and an entire satchel of red apples but one green apple which he gave to Cooper because, "They're your favorite, right?"

Technology:

Between the five of them and their contacts they always have the latest and greatest technology—except for Marvin, but after a while they even get him a little pay-as-you-go phone—but Frank laughs every time their navigational system tells them to go one way and Cooper yells at it and takes his own route, eventually getting them lost; he had always been of the impression older people were supposed to have troubles with the gadgets.

Gift:

Frank never really considered anything of his previous relationship, yet somehow every day Cooper let him closer was a gift, each new secret something to be cherished, and every new pain something to be held tight with his own.

Smile:

Frank had the most glittering smile, all loving and devious and full of life—Cooper couldn't help being drawn to it like a moth to flame, couldn't resist the natural pull that smile incited in him when directed towards him, couldn't deny the urge to kiss that smile and taste it on his tongue.

Innocence:

Cooper used to have an innocence about him, way back when, before the CIA fucked him over, before his wife left and took their children, and well before he died the first, second, third time, and though Frank almost wished he could have known him before all that light seeped out of his eyes, but at the same time he was glad he could have someone so broken in his life, because there was little chance he could be broken further.

Completion:

The only completion for Frank is a warm night spent together with Cooper; Cooper only wishes he could feel the same sometimes.

Clouds:

"It's a 9mm," Cooper said, but Frank was quick on his thoughts, saying, "No, it's a 20mm."; Victoria surprised them both by saying, "It looks like a phallus…"

Sky:

The sky passes over them lazily, or maybe they pass beneath the sky, on a boat that's supposed to be taking from Costa Rica to Peru; the boat is nice luxurious and must have cost a pretty penny, but for what they get paid to do these types of missions neither can be forced to care, so they take a boat when a plane would be much quicker and they lounge on the deck, watching the sky above them, soaking up the artificial warmth of the sun, and the tangible warmth they give each other.

Heaven:

He was coming down from a carnal high, tingling sensations still shooting down his spine, the feeling of floating making him somehow feel heavier, and Frank resting heavy on his chest ; he figured this was a close to heaven as he would ever be allowed to come.

Hell:

Cooper realized one day that he would have to sit by Frank for the rest of his life, but would never be able to touch or hold him or kiss him…he would just sit there…just sit there.

Sun:

The sun is rising as they're going to sleep after a job not well done, but done nonetheless; the motel they've rented for the night is low-key and really kind of smells of cheap sex and quick stop urinals, and even though the blankets scratch and the pillows are flat and the damn sun is making it hard to sleep the way it's shining in their eyes, when Cooper curls into him it the most comfortable Frank has been in some time.

Moon:

They both look at the same moon, not always together, and certainly not at the beginning of their twisted relationship, but they've always looked at the same moon, talked under the same silver light about their day, what they were doing, who they had to kill; it's always been the same moon; it's always been the same light.

Waves:

CIA agents know a little bit about everything, a little about history, about psychology, about math, and science, which is why Cooper didn't doubt that Frank could in fact read minds.

Hair:

Frank twisted his fingers through Cooper's hair, feeling dark, soft—so_ soft_—strands of hair sliding through his fingers effortlessly; Cooper's eyes are on him, watching at Frank sifted his fingers in his hair and it's much more intimate than it should be, but he can't stop; he can't stop from leaning down to kiss pliant lips while continuous tangling his fingers through the softest, shortest strands he's ever run across.

Supernova:

Cooper knows they are a supernova in the making; they are a star suffering gravitational collapse and burning brightly for it; he knows that he and Frank eventually are going burn out—_explode_—but at the core of that bright explosion, there will always be that dense mass of love that is left over.


End file.
